Trace Concepts

based on the essay “Four Trace Concepts in Landscape Architecture” by Christophe Girot

In this essay, Girot explains his four methods of understanding a landscape or site. Each takes place at a different stage of visiting a site and each successively buries deeper into understanding the place. What is important about this method and why it should be done is stated on page two of the article. “…A designer seldom belongs to the place in which he or she is asked to intervene.” This method is designed in order to help one establish his or her sense of the place even though it is foreign to them.

First is “Landing” and is the initial perception of the site. As he says it “invokes the passage from the unknown to the known.” One thing that is also crucial to landing is whether the site is approached “properly” or “improperly.” This is important to how you will later understand the landscape and how the building will eventually be sited.

Second is “Grounding” and is similar to landing although this can occur more than once. Grounding is based on research and analysis of the site and builds off that first impression of the landing. It is about uncovering the multiple layers of a site to read the history, ecology and context.

Third is “Finding” and is about discovery. It has to do with finding that one aspect of the site that makes it unique. Then that unique feature can be used to drive the site strategy. When I read this I immediately thought of the Getty Center and how Richard Meier used the two crests of the hills as guidelines for the rest of the project.

And finally fourth is “Founding” and is based on taking what you learned from the previous four methods and formulating a reaction based on that information. It is about creating a project that is specific to the place because you are basing the project on information that was directly collected from the place.

What I find interesting about these four terms, landing, grounding, finding and founding, is that they could also be used to describe how a building meets the landscape. Landing being an object lightly touching the surface, grounding being a building that interacts with the land but not to the extent of mutating it, finding being a building as ruin or something that is “found” within the landscape and then founding as a traditional building simply hitting the ground like a brownstone in Boston.